Design Fiction has come a long way in the 10+ years since it all began. It's been gaining popularity since then, yet people still misunderstand what it is all about. So its creators made a short film to explain Design Fiction and why it's useful.
posted to MetaFilter by iamkimiam at 2:54 AM on June 22, 2022 (15 comments)

Pixar’s Up was inspired by a single image: a house with balloons tied to its roof floating into the sky, far away from the burden of daily life. “It seemed freeing and aspirational"...But the makers of Up knew that even feel-good stories need pathos... The opening of Up, however, is more than just a narrative device. The movie-within-a-movie is as emotionally heavy as Carl’s helium-lifted house is buoyant.
posted to MetaFilter by If only I had a penguin... at 10:18 AM on June 17, 2022 (118 comments)

Why is this tiny frog so awful at jumping? "The moment the pumpkin toadlet leaps into the air, anything seems possible. The tiny frog, which is about the size of a honeybee and the color of a cloudberry, has no problem launching itself high off the ground. But when the pumpkin toadlet begins to soar, something goes awry."
posted to MetaFilter by moonmilk at 3:49 PM on June 15, 2022 (70 comments)

Popular organist and Director of Music at Pembroke, Anna Lapwood, often finds herself rehearsing on the house organ at Albert Hall. While doing so in May, Bonobo's band heard this happen. Within 18 hours she was written into the closing night and completely slayed it. [SLYT]
posted to MetaFilter by majick at 6:26 AM on June 13, 2022 (24 comments)

Hi Mefites - over the last few months I've been stepping away from my role as moderator here. I wanted to take this chance to make it official and say Thanks for all the fish.
posted to MetaTalk by LobsterMitten at 9:07 AM on June 9, 2022 (85 comments)

I know I've come across many good answers, comments, posts and questions about adult diagnoses of ADHD. Do you have any in your memory banks or favorited, followed or flagged you could share with me?
posted to MetaTalk by Grandysaur at 11:36 AM on June 6, 2022 (22 comments)

Here is a short and very-layperson-accessible linguistics paper that made cartoon steam shoot out of my ears. I hope that you enjoy it as well.
posted to MetaFilter by DoctorFedora at 5:45 AM on June 10, 2022 (108 comments)

Cell Tower, a word search game in which you find words on a grid. Letters must be all connected orthogonally, and read top-down, left-right. Click the hamburger menu to access both the daily and previous puzzles, and instructions. Note that there are lots of words available, but only one solution that uses all the letters in the grid.
posted to MetaFilter by Gorgik at 5:37 AM on June 10, 2022 (25 comments)

AI-generated art and comics about cats, from the future! I've been generating these using a tool called Midjourney, which has proved especially good at mimicking the pen-and-ink art style of New Yorker cartoons. I'm having a ton of fun making these (“new yorker cartoon about a cat being chased by a swarm of bees” is my favorite so far), so I set up a dedicated Instagram. New cat comics/art/weirdness a couple of times a day!
posted to MetaFilter Projects by oulipian at 9:08 AM on June 10, 2022 (3 comments)

I recently integrated Planck.js into a client's product and wanted to reuse that knowledge to make a fun game, so I picked an idea and tweeted along as I refined & built it.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by malevolent at 8:02 AM on June 10, 2022 (7 comments)

In January 2018 music writer Tom Breihan began writing a column, The Number Ones, for Stereogum. (When this column was started, the #1 song in America was Ed Sheeran's “Perfect”.) The premise is simple: he is going through and writing about every single song to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart in order, starting with the very first #1, Ricky Nelson's “Poor Little Fool” from August 1958, and continuing, presumably, at least until he catches up with the chart. At his current rate of three columns a week or so (and the rate of new #1 singles in the streaming era), it'll be into spring 2024 before that happens, but he's made it through the first 40 years of the chart into 1998, so there's a ton of great writing (827+ columns!) that deserves attention.
posted to MetaFilter by Superilla at 2:47 PM on June 3, 2022 (31 comments)

(Previously on Metafilter)
posted to MetaFilter Projects by bondcliff at 8:35 AM on May 27, 2022 (4 comments)

So, this list fell out of one of my old notebooks today. I definitely wrote it, but I have zero recollection of doing so and no clue as to what it could mean. Was it just some random word association game? Am I an unwitting sleeper spy who found my activation code? WHY IS WORDS? (mods, feel free to delete if this is too chatfiltery...)
posted to Ask MetaFilter by a.steele at 1:05 PM on May 25, 2022 (40 comments)

Hi there, Metafilter! Happy Wednesday! You’ll find updates regarding the site below. I’m looking forward to your feedback and questions.
posted to MetaTalk by loup at 1:52 PM on May 25, 2022 (158 comments)

A new trailer for "3000 Years of Longing", the new film from George Miller, based on story by A. S. Byatt. (SLYT)
posted to MetaFilter by Ipsifendus at 3:58 PM on May 20, 2022 (22 comments)

Gamesnacks.com has over 140 simple games you can play in browser with no ads or crap. I've played most of them.
posted to MetaFilter by rebent at 10:23 AM on November 19, 2021 (29 comments)

Ant Game! Place anthills and see how much food your ants can collect before time runs out. Make your own maps in Sandbox mode. Compete against the world in Daily Challenges.
posted to MetaFilter by MetaFilter World Peace at 6:42 AM on May 19, 2022 (19 comments)

Put your skills to the test and solve thirty-two Wordles at once! You have 37 guesses to solve all 32 words.
posted to MetaFilter by geoff. at 2:43 PM on May 15, 2022 (78 comments)

If It Feels Like a New Dark Age Is Falling… That’s Because It Is. Why We’re Entering a Dark Age Between Civilizations.
What’s Happening to America? A Theocratic-Fascist Revolution. When a Fanatical 30% Suddenly Seizes Control of Your Society, It’s Called a Revolution.
Umair Haque - love him or leave him. That his writing output is prolific is an understatement.
He has been described as a Master of Catastrophe who speaks in apocalyptic jazz scat (thanks clavdivs).
posted to MetaFilter by adamvasco at 5:21 AM on May 15, 2022 (57 comments)

We’ve talked about Graham’s Number previously, most recently after Ron Graham’s death in 2020. Numberphile has several great videos about it: Graham’s Number; What is Graham’s Number? (featuring Ron Graham); How Big is Graham’s Number? (featuring Ron Graham). But we’re just getting started. The number TREE(3), which comes from a simple combinatorial problem in graph theory, is proven to be finite, but unimaginably larger than the already unimaginable Graham’s Number. Tony Padilla explains further in these Numberphile videos: The Enormous TREE(3); TREE(3) (extra footage); TREE vs Graham’s Number; TREE(Graham’s Number) (extra). There is an endless supply of even larger numbers defined by fast-growing computable sequences, but things get wilder in the realm of uncomputable numbers. The Busy Beaver function, related to the maximum number of steps taken by a halting Turing machine with a given number of states, provably grows faster than any computable function. David Brailsford explains in the Computerphile video Busy Beaver Turing Machines. And Rayo’s Number is “one of the largest named numbers in professional mathematics.” Tony Padilla is back to explain in The Daddy of Big Numbers (Rayo’s Number).
posted to MetaFilter by mubba at 1:43 PM on February 17, 2022 (24 comments)

The proprietor of one of the longest regularly updated static web blogs, kottke.org, has announced that he is taking an extended break. After 24 years, Mefi's own (#109) Jason Kottke says his fiddle leaf fig tree "is not ok. And neither am I — I feel as off-balance as my tree looks. I’m burrrrned out." Starting back with post 78 there have been hundreds of posts and thousands of comments referencing Kottke, and Jason has featured Metafilter a number of times as well.
posted to MetaFilter by zenon at 7:48 AM on May 13, 2022 (19 comments)

Greg Egan's Dream Factory is a story about the ethics of turning cats into entertainment devices with brain electrodes.
posted to MetaFilter by kaibutsu at 12:17 AM on May 9, 2022 (3 comments)

A delightful performance of Canon in D by Hiromi Uehara that keeps getting jazzier as it progresses, with an inline transcription following the whole way.
posted to MetaFilter by a faithful sock at 7:17 AM on May 6, 2022 (36 comments)

Infinite Images and the latent camera Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst talk about their experiences with DALL-E (versions 1 and 2) and their thoughts on a future where anyone can make conceptual art from a few words. Holly and AI previously and previouslier.
posted to MetaFilter by snortasprocket at 5:52 PM on May 5, 2022 (19 comments)

The Gif Gallery claims to contain (very nearly) 100,000 gifs. Related: a 2013 FPP on the pronounciation, a Stephen Whilite obituary, the giphy repository (FPP), and a 2010 Slate article.
posted to MetaFilter by Wordshore at 4:11 AM on May 5, 2022 (38 comments)

Knotwords (iOS, Android, Steam) (trailer, review) is a new daily word game from Zach Gage, creator of games like Ridiculous Fishing, SpellTower, and Really Bad Chess. It's probably not going to get Wordle-famous, but Josh Wardle likes it, and, if you like word games and/or logic puzzles, you might too.
posted to MetaFilter by box at 6:19 AM on May 4, 2022 (25 comments)

"Today is my birthday. I turn 70. I’ve learned a few things so far that might be helpful to others. For the past few years, I’ve jotted down bits of unsolicited advice each year and much to my surprise I have more to add this year. So here is my birthday gift to you all: 103 bits of wisdom I wish I had known when I was young."--Kevin Kelly (more advice, previously, from the man who brought you Cool Tools).
posted to MetaFilter by MonkeyToes at 2:09 PM on May 3, 2022 (90 comments)

I've installed a language learning extension in my browser called Toucan which changes an assortment of words on whatever page you're looking at into your target learning language -- in my case French -- with the idea that you will learn that vocabulary in the context of your primary language. But what's currently cracking me up is that when I open a page on Metafilter: communauté weblog, it often chooses to translate bits and pieces of peoples usernames.
posted to MetaTalk by jacquilynne at 3:38 PM on May 7, 2022 (46 comments)

What music sounds most to you as if it were written/performed by/for goblins?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by scruss at 7:16 PM on April 30, 2022 (44 comments)

An interview with Andrew Shirvell, the assistant Attorney General of the state of Michigan regarding Chris Armstrong, the first openly gay student president of the University of Michigan Student Assembly. Armstrong is currently the target of the blog Chris Armstrong Watch. He's labeled a racist elitist liar, a privileged pervert, and is accused of having a radical homosexual agenda. Facebook postings are used extensively as proof. The author of the blog? None other than the assistant Attorney General himself.
posted to MetaFilter by Anonymous at 6:18 AM on September 29, 2010 (179 comments)

The final two shows of the Spirited Away stage production will be livestreamed through Hulu, July 3rd and 4th. This announcement was preceded by some photos of the stage production - the puppetry looks amazing, I can't wait to see it in motion. Official Disney trailer for English dub of Spirited Away, the movie (YT).
posted to MetaFilter by snerson at 8:47 PM on April 6, 2022 (10 comments)

The Atlantic delivers a solid summary of why algorithmically-driven social media is harmful to common culture and democracy itself, ending with a few ideas about what can be done to course correct.
posted to MetaFilter by Leeway at 6:03 PM on April 30, 2022 (36 comments)

CJ The X reviews Spider-man: No way Home. (spoilers)
posted to MetaFilter by simmering octagon at 4:50 PM on April 28, 2022 (18 comments)

Hey MetaFilter! I have some happy/sad news: I’ve taken another job! I will still be around here, but professionally I’ll be moving on.
posted to MetaTalk by Eyebrows McGee at 11:25 AM on April 17, 2022 (56 comments)

The Library of Congress announced the 2022 National Recording Registry inductees, from FDR's presidential speeches to the Robin Williams episode of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast.
posted to MetaFilter by Etrigan at 6:01 AM on April 25, 2022 (7 comments)

Independent league baseball team the Savannah Bananas knows how to entertain. On a given night, their sold out stadium might feature the team doing the Harlem Shake as a hitter steps to the plate, their 60 & up female dance troop The Banana Nanas, The Dad Bod Cheerleading Squad, their official bat dog, Daisy, or an opposing team hitter whose bat is literally on fire. Taking their cues from the Harlem Globetrotters, the Bananas aim to be as unproblematically crazy and entertaining as possible. Their motto: Fans first. Entertain always. All inclusive.
posted to MetaFilter by DirtyOldTown at 12:34 PM on April 22, 2022 (27 comments)

State Senator Mallory McMorrow, Democrat of the Michigan State Senate responds to Senator Lana Theis.

Her Office

Donate
posted to MetaFilter by y2karl at 9:56 AM on April 20, 2022 (43 comments)

Twitter user @bitterkarella read 20 years of the Sinfest webcomic (unrolled) so you don't have to (and you shouldn't). On his Garbage Day blog, Ryan Broderick read the thread so you don't have to (but you should) and summarizes it, in part, as "…the comic’s 22-year evolution actually gives us a startling insight into how a very specific kind of internet man would shift from angry nerd to anti-'woke' transphobic fascist."
posted to MetaFilter by signal at 1:31 PM on April 30, 2022 (85 comments)

On the Zillow Goes Wild Twitter feed, one Wisconsin listing popped up for a homespun sign with a decidedly atypical (if fitting) message in the master bedroom. MEL Magazine has an interview with the homeowner about the sign and her surprise 15 minutes of fame.
posted to MetaFilter by NoxAeternum at 11:02 AM on April 19, 2022 (74 comments)

Infinite procedurally generated Chinese landscape painting.
posted to MetaFilter by smcg at 10:27 AM on April 17, 2022 (11 comments)

Japan has a number of islands and locations called "Nekojima" or "Cat Island" because they are overrun by cats, which provide more of a tourist attraction than an inconvenience (one previously). On one such island, the cats are followed by the diligent, silent Youtubers Impressed cat video and 野郎が撮った猫動画. Examples: seaside cats of mixed emotions; pond tea tiger welcomes humans; a failed attempt at lewdness. They are cared for by volunteers like the cheerful BIGMAMA, who feeds, grooms, and medicates the cats. She seems to have uncanny cat-obedience powers, possibly because she sings their names whenever she visits them. Commenters from around the world respond to the Google Translate descriptions in the same dreamlike English.
posted to MetaFilter by Countess Elena at 5:52 AM on April 15, 2022 (11 comments)

Lizzo dropped a new video/single today: About Damn Time (SLyoutube).
posted to MetaFilter by skycrashesdown at 4:05 PM on April 14, 2022 (32 comments)

"am i taking notes? am i dicking around on my tablet? who knows! not my boss!!!" Kitty Unpretty writes an extremely opinionated list of office supplies recommendations -- organizers, highlighters, a hanging file frame, a paper folder, washi tape, and more. "now i always remember to take the slip off to include with the check because, i want my paperclip back. don’t you dare put my cute paperclip in the file cabinet. it’s mine." This post is colorful, literally (lots of colors) and figuratively (profanity).
posted to MetaFilter by brainwane at 2:44 PM on April 13, 2022 (47 comments)

Nine Inch Nails' 2007 album Year Zero foretold of a dystopian future, set in 15 years in the future, 2022, where the Religious Right was taking over the country, terrorism inspired mass surveillance, drugs for population control were in the water, and something from beyond the planet is trying to reach out with a message. But let's not start with the music... let's start with the plot [Reddit, top answer has a very good synopsis of the setting and storyline].
posted to MetaFilter by hippybear at 4:02 PM on March 31, 2022 (20 comments)

The 30-minute Russian animated film Tale of Tales has been more than once voted the greatest animated film of all time. Here it is with English subtitles, though they are not needed. The film is structured like a memory, and depicts war, love and dancing. One review site states "It is without precedent in cinema - maybe in all of art, because although it borrows heavily from literature and poetry, it does so in a final form that does not to any real extent resemble those media." The animator Yuri Norstein (also mefi previously) has stated that the film is about "simple concepts that give you the strength to live"
posted to MetaFilter by vacapinta at 4:43 AM on March 23, 2022 (15 comments)

I wanted to make a simple webgame similar to those old Flash ones where you eat smaller fish & avoid bigger ones. A 'budget' of 1-1.5 days seemed sensible and I tweeted updates while building it.
posted to MetaFilter Projects by malevolent at 5:48 AM on April 21, 2022 (5 comments)

Summon Demons (SLYT)
posted to MetaFilter by furtive at 8:17 PM on April 11, 2022 (13 comments)

The psychology of climate change. Climate grief is on the rise. Mourning is necessary, but as an antidote to hopelessness, try out this 30 day climate change action plan at The Revelator. And check out their series Vanishing, that explores some of the human stakes of the wildlife extinction crisis.
posted to MetaFilter by spamandkimchi at 1:32 PM on April 10, 2022 (59 comments)

The problem with every-unit-moves (EUM) in 4X games is that it only creates the illusion of tactical and strategic decision making. (I am taking the prerogative to coin an acronym for this to draw attention to the fact that employing EUM is an intentional design choice, just like using one-unit-per-tile is a choice.) Each turn, the player is evaluating the most effective single move for each of their units, which is often a very straightforward and often even boring decision, without any tradeoffs, with no reason to NOT take an action.
posted to MetaFilter by smcg at 12:43 PM on April 8, 2022 (12 comments)

A new trailer , for a film distributed by A24 no less, featuring Marcel the Shell With Shoes On. (Marcel previously)
posted to MetaFilter by Ipsifendus at 6:23 AM on April 5, 2022 (15 comments)